In today's society, cleanliness is very important both from a health standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint. Whether at home or away from home, traditional cleansing tools such as soap, cloths, and running water may be unavailable, unsuitable, or inconvenient for a particular task. Cleansing of sensitive areas of the body also requires special consideration, as ordinary towel products, cleansing agents, and other associated materials such as disinfectants may cause irritation and discomfort. The use of special agents such as disinfectants and/or moisturizing agents may also be required.
At home or away from home, the cleansing of children and infants presents special considerations due to the nature and frequency of the cleansing activity, as well as the sensitivity of their skin. Of particular concern is the cleansing of sensitive body regions of infants during the changing of diapers and of adults utilizing incontinent protection articles.
To address these problems, manufacturers of consumer products have developed disposable, synthetic and/or natural fiber-based towel products which are pre-moistened with a non-irritating cleansing agent. As used herein, the terms "single-use" and "disposable" are used interchangeably to refer to towels and packages which are to be used once and then discarded, rather than retained (and perhaps cleaned) for reuse. The terms "moisture", "moistened", and "moistening agent" are intended to refer not only to water or aqueous solutions, but also any other fluid which may be useful in combination with a towel product such as disinfecting solutions (including alcohol), water-based solutions, oil-based solutions, soaps, lotions, solvents, etc. Of course, dry additives could be employed, such as powders or granules.
There are two basic types of containers for such pre-moistened towel products, namely multi-towel containers and single-towel packages.
In one typical multi-towel container, a flexible or rigid moisture-impervious container is utilized. The pre-moistened towel products are in some sort of folded, stacked arrangement of discreet towel sheets. These configurations permit one towel at a time to be exposed to the consumer and extracted from the container. These containers often have a tub-like configuration (a rigid container) or a soft, generally rectangular package configuration and are usually recloseable to protect the remaining towels.
These types of towel products and dispensing systems are not without drawbacks. Towel sheets which are merely folded and stacked one on top of the other provide no means of feeding out consecutive sheets or of facilitating the grasping of an individual towel, thus requiring the consumer to try to find a free edge of the exposed towel and peel the towel free from the remaining stack of towels. This is often a time consuming and frustrating procedure (particularly with towels having a higher moisture content) which can distract one's attention from the task at hand.
To overcome this accessibility shortcoming, multi-towel dispensers have been developed with a generally tub-like configuration and an upper panel having an opening sized and configured to hold a leading portion of a towel in an isolated orientation where it can be readily grasped by the consumer. Alternatively, such dispensers may take the form of a soft, rectangular package with a recloseable aperture on one surface. These dispensing systems are commonly known as "pop-up" dispensers, wherein the trailing edge of a towel being extracted from the package first draws the leading edge of the next towel through the opening, then typically "pops" free from the leading edge of the next towel, leaving the leading edge of the next towel held in a readily accessible position by the edges of the aperture. The towel sheets are typically either on a continuous roll, with perforations defining the ends of individual towels, or in some sort of folded and interleaved relationship. Some sort of interaction and/or connection between successive towel sheets is required in order to feed consecutive towels through the aperture.
Towel configurations of the continuous roll type with perforations typically have a comparatively higher dispensing force requirement than with discreet towels, as the perforated region must have sufficient structural integrity to prevent premature separation. Higher force requirements to complete the severing of towels at the perforations often necessitate the use of both hands, i.e., one to pull on the towel and one to restrain the package. This is particularly troublesome when one or both hands are soiled and/or one hand is otherwise occupied. Such dispensing arrangements also, due to the comparatively higher force requirements for separation, may tend to cause the leading edge of the next towel to protrude rather far beyond the opening in the package (excessive pop-up), causing difficulty in closing and resealing the package and excessive drying out of the remaining towels. Higher separation forces may also lead to the extraction of multiple towels before any separation occurs, leaving the consumer with more towel sheets than needed and a choice between wasting unused towels and trying to stuff some of them back inside the package.
One approach which attempts to address the excessive pop-up problem is the use of a two-web system (a co-facial arrangement of two superimposed webs) of perforated towels in which the perforations in one web are spaced intermediate the perforations in the other web. This double web is then accordion-folded inside a pop-up dispensing package. The theory of operation is that when separation at a line of perforation in one web occurs, the next towel presented is the next towel in the opposite web since it travels outside of the aperture along with the extracted towel and protrudes outside the aperture prior to separation of the first towel. The spacing between perforations in the two webs and the fold interval are two variables which control the amount of presentment (pop-up). While this approach attempts to address the pop-up problem, its reliance on the use of perforations still typically results in comparatively higher separation forces which often necessitates the use of both hands, and failures to separate can still result in the extraction of multiple towels.
One further approach to the pop-up/separation problem utilizes discreet, folded, and interleaved towel sheets. The towels are interfolded such that they have overlapping edge portions which are substantially parallel to one another and which adhere to one another such that successive towels are fed out through a pop-up style opening in the package. Since the towels are discreet, the difficulty with the higher separation force required in tearing along perforations is avoided.
With pop-up dispensers of this discreet, folded, interleaved variety, however, there is a narrow range of reliable pop-up action between product chaining and fallback. Chaining occurs when product separation does not occur as one sheet is removed, and thus multiple towel sheets are withdrawn in a continuous web or chain of products. Fallback occurs when the towel sheets separate prematurely before the next sheet is drawn into the dispensing orifice. The next sheet thus falls back inside the package, and the user does not have a portion of the next sheet available for grasping. The narrow operating window that occurs between these two conditions is primarily controlled by product moisture loading, dispensing orifice size and/or shape, extent of product overlap, compression during manufacture, shipping, and/or storage, and substrate properties.
Variations in the above-mentioned properties which occur in the manufacturing process, and also during shipping and/or storage of such packages, may lead to instances of product chaining or fallback. Actual usage conditions which add the additional variability of the manner in which the consumer withdraws the sheets increase the likelihood that the consumer may experience chaining (and hence product waste) or fallback (requiring reaching into the package to try to re-thread the leading edge of the next sheet through the generally narrow orifice to restart the process).
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved pop-up wet wipe dispensing system which provides increased reliability in actual consumer usage while achieving truly one-handed operation.
It would further be desirable to provide an improved pop-up wet wipe dispensing system which is more tolerant of variations in manufacturing tolerances and conditions of shipping and/or storage.